


Love is an Evil Word

by glim



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-20
Updated: 2010-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:56:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/pseuds/glim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode tag for 3.4, "Beauty and the Beasts." <i>"There's something I need to tell you, and it's really important." The words threaten to catch in Buffy's throat, dry and sharp.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Love is an Evil Word

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Summer of Giles 2009.

"We need to talk," she says, and even with the quiet suggestion, the words stick in her throat. "I mean, not right now, because even though it's way easier to say all this when you can't hear me, it doesn't really mean anything if the 'we' part of the 'we need to talk' isn't happening. I just needed to say that, all right?"

Giles mumbles in his tranquilizer-gun induced sleep and turns his face into the hand Buffy rests against his cheek. He probably has a few more hours before he's awake and functional. Long enough for Buffy to go home, shower, and come back to try this conversation one more time.

They're good to each other. She tries to be as good as she can to and for Giles. She came back; she apologizes in all the little ways she can think of; she keeps him close and has gone on nightly patrol with him for past few weeks. Giles is and has been… better. Probably. He gets her to talk about what she doesn't even want to think about in such a patient, persistent manner, that the thought of keeping this new secret from him makes Buffy's chest ache in a familiar, horrible way.

But, at the same time, they're horrible to each other, skidding over wounded places and not looking back to where the hurt came from, acting like the world had paused and time suspended, like the big space behind (between) them is an empty one.

+++

Here's where it begins:

Buffy comes home to Sunnydale.

(Except that's not quite right; the story starts and restarts in a few different places. Los Angeles, Sunnydale, back to LA, and now back in Sunnydale again. She wonders if this is what her whole life will look like: a dangerous, uncertain oscillation between places that are almost home, but always seem to fall short in predictable, yet painful, ways.

Not that it matters. This story starts here. No back-turning of pages.)

Buffy comes home to Sunnydale, finds her mom, finds her friends, and finds Giles, seemingly unchanged. He offers her tea and smiles the same half-shy, half-open, all-wonderful smile he always has.

(Except, see, that's not quite right, either. He offers it with stuttering fingers and his gaze holds hers a couple seconds too long before it slides away to an unreachable, unreadable place.)

Still, the cups and saucers are the same, the tea tastes the same, and Giles looks like he almost always looks when she comes over his house at night before or after patrol. His tie loosened, his sleeves rolled up, hair sort of rumply, especially if he's been reading or thinking about watcherly things a lot.

Which he couldn't have been doing, not really, because she just got back home.

"I just want normal, you know?"

"Of course. Here, put those…" Giles hands her the last set of cups and saucers and nods for her to put them in the sink with the rest. "Relatively normal, anyway."

"Right. Sunnydale normal. And I know it'll be different, and maybe different will be good, but… Some kind of normal's not too much to hope for is it?"

Giles frowns and looks away from Buffy, down at the floor, his lips moving with a couple half-formed words, and then shakes his head. "Not too much, no, as long as you're willing to compromise on your definition of normal, I suppose."

"I think I did that years ago," Buffy says, then remembers they're not doing the rewind to past trauma thing tonight.

"Haven't we all?" Tea, sugar, and biscuits go into the cabinet above Buffy's head and Giles offers her another of his half-smiles as he shuts the door.

Because he's Giles, he doesn't laugh when she wants to patrol, thereby proving that hunting down demons and monsters really is their version of normal, rather than impromptu tea parties. Later, he walks with her through a maze of overturned trashcans and recycling bins post _Welcome Back, Buffy, Here Have Some Zombies_ party, and smiles again when she touches his hand and says, "See, back to normal."

And if Buffy doesn't ask him what it was like to be her Watcher when she was trying to stop being the Slayer, and if she doesn't mention that he sometimes slides back into that incomprehensible silence, it isn't because she doesn't care enough to want to know.

It's the asking, the process of getting to know somebody, the closeness, the fear that devastates.

+

In the space of one day, Sunnydale has two Slayers and Buffy has a boyfriend. There's something wrong there; one too many of each and Buffy's not really sure how to deal.

Her usual solution: patrol; with Giles.

The air cools as night falls, enough so that Buffy keeps her hands curled around a cup of coffee and the hood on her sweatshirt pulled up. A light breeze winds its way through grass and gravestones, carrying a damp, fresh, clean sort of scent on it that tells Buffy there won't be any slaying done tonight. It smells like turned earth and green things, like renewal, not decay.

"So," she says, then stops, and turns to Giles. "Here we are."

He raises his eyebrows at her, over his glasses, and shrugs in silent agreement. He has tea, Lipton, with sugar and milk, which, despite it probably bring not completely Giles-appropriate, he accepted without any more comment than a murmured thank-you.

"So," Buffy starts again. Isn't she always doing that, though? "About this whole sharing you with Faith thing. Not on, Giles."

The breeze catches the steam from Giles' tea and he replaces the lid after removing the tea bag. "In a professional manner of speaking?"

"What… no. Do we even have a professional relationship? In a personal manner."

"I think, in a personal manner of speaking, I couldn't… you don't need to worry about, ah, as you say, sharing me." Giles doesn't stutter, doesn't mumble into his tea, and doesn't pull away when Buffy rests a hand on his arm.

"Good. I'll not be sharing myself either. In a personal manner of speaking. Love is evil, anyway."

Her explanation sounds exactly like Buffy doesn't think it should sound: like Sunnydale needs one less Slayer and Buffy needs one less boyfriend.

Well. Maybe she does. She's not sure what she's going to do with this whole boyfriend, dating life, love life sort of thing anyway. Wasn't that the normal she already gave up a lifetime ago?

Besides, she has Giles. And if that isn't the most non of all sequiturs… Except, it's really not. She does have him, in ways that don't slot into 'professional' or 'personal' spaces, even if they could come up with definitions of those terms that would work tonight and every other night they sit outside like this. Together. Quiet. Almost touching; not talking.

He's already pulled it out of her, the secret she kept locked inside, small and sorrowful, of how love stories end. If she reaches beyond the empty space inside her, past the one between them they've yet to acknowledge, Buffy knows Giles understands her in ways he won't and maybe can't tell her.

Maybe it's beyond telling; beyond knowing and naming the thing that Buffy calls love (which is evil, heartbreakingly scary and evil, the worst monster she ever faced).

They need to talk soon and stop skirting the painful, jagged edges of their relationship in the hope that time will wear them smooth.

+++

"There you are." Giles is up when Buffy gets back, a little pale and unsteady looking, but otherwise okay.

"I left you a little note."

"'Brought you home, took your keys, be back soon. Love, Buffy.' Yes, highly informative. Are you going to let me know how you got me home? Or is my dignity better off not knowing?"

"I'll explain later. Here, I brought you the ginger ale of consolation. Also, Tylenol. Extra strength."

Giles accepts both bottles and Buffy follows him into the kitchen, where he already has tea and toast enough for the both of them.

"Is something wrong? Did you have the same dream again – about Angel?"

Buffy wants nothing more than to say no, to dismiss even the possibility of that dream, to decide they're not going back and she's not going to do this to the both of them, she's not going to catch them in the interminable loop of bitter memory. But fate or destiny or some other, crueler force has already taken that decision away from her. Maybe this is the least and best thing they can do, to not let time or memory elide to hide the times, the places where they tried to not hurt each other.

"There's something I need to tell you, and it's really important." The words threaten to catch in Buffy's throat, dry and sharp. "But first, I want you to tell me about your summer… I want to hear everything you want to tell me."


End file.
